The Snake

I am beyond terrified of snakes, it is the only fear that trumps my fear of heights.  But as a parent I am confronted daily with attempting to make my children better people than I am.  With that being said I feel as though my fear is one of my greatest weaknesses, so yesterday when we were "hiking" which is just walking the property and I saw something move in front of me - I knew I had several choices to make.  Obviously I wanted to take off the other way and shutter in fear and disgust, but I was holding on to Tyler's hand because she refuses to wear her shoes on the correct feet so she trips even more than my already clumsy kids do.  So if I jumped and moved in the other direction especially quickly I would have to explain why.  Instead I took the high road, swallowed the vomit in my mouth and called Austin over to see what I had found, held onto both of their hands and walked slowly behind God's abomination following it around the yard.  Then we simply HAD to look it up online and see what kind it was, once we found Garter Snakes we had to find the right color.  Then we had to look up the poisonous ones so we could see how different they look.  I spent 20 minutes at the computer trying not to brush my legs frantically thinking that the snake had followed us in the house.  Needless to say I didn't sleep well last night.

Dog Show

Oh my word...we went to an Akita Nationals dog show yesterday to meet with the breeder that we are getting the puppies from.  The girls, my Mom and I walked in surrounded by the most beautiful dogs you have ever seen and simply could not wipe the smile off our faces.  Here are some pictures from the day...oh yeah and then we ate lunch at the aquarium, what a fantastic day.


Here's the generation class, which means you have to have the Grandma dog, Mom/Dad and then child dog.

We took the opportunity on a very nice warm day (before the snow came today) to wear our princess dresses.

So my Mom looked at this picture and said "Goose you closed your eyes".

And then "Girls, both of you closed your eyes...keep them open for the picture."

Now they're open but they both look very surprised.

And I just have to love Goose and all her personality.

Here's one of the big males from Black Forest Akitas.

Isn't he just stunning?!?!?

Dart League

I joined a dart league.  Probably your next questions is "Can you even throw darts?" followed closely by "There's dart leagues out there?".  I was hesitant when Adam first mentioned it to me, but then he went in to the fact that Joe had already signed me up.  Well hell.  Looks like I will have to learn to play darts then.  But truthfully Joe just wanted me to have a reason to get out of the house once a week.  The stay at home Mommies know this all to well, other than the grocery store or lunch with a friend (which I covet) we stay home quite a bit and slightly more in the winter. Once volleyball and softball are done and it starts getting dark at 4 we become home bodies.  Keep in mind so far everything I have listed I take the kids to so it is still not a break from them, but just the change of scenery and the kids being able to do something other than being corrected by me works nicely.  So last night was our first league and I must admit I was pretty nervous, so nervous in fact that I was stressing about whether or not I should bring darts and talking about it for nearly an hour only to then forget them at home anyways.  Who has two thumbs and showed up to play darts without darts?!?! Yep this guy.  Everyone chuckled at me but other than that I had an absolute blast.  The only thing that even made it somewhat off was that Joe had an award ceremony last night so he couldn't watch the girls, so my Mom drove all the way down to have dinner with them and get them to bed. (Thank you Mom!)  Parenting brings such an odd realm of guilt with it.  Oh yeah and did I mention that apparently in a dart league you play 13 games a night and we won 9 of those last night.  Yahoo!!!!!

Picture Download

I finally got around to downloading the photos from my camera of our Indiana trip, although I didn't take many these ones turned out great.

I happened to be taking a picture of Joe the morning we were on Lake of the Ozarks just when a giant fish jumped out of the water.  You can tell he was excited.

And of course I had a lot of pictures of the awesome water slide at Marmee and Poppa's!

Turning him loose...

And today turning "Roger" loose.  (Name courtesy of Austin)

Photo Catch-Up

I was just looking through some pictures and thought about the fact that it has been forever since I was on here updating the Blog world.

So here we go...

We went to the State Fair before leaving for our trip to Indiana.

Here's my little Cowgirls.

And they had a fishing pond.

Here's Austin in the super cool blow up balls on the water.

Good morning from Lake of the Ozarks

This is what an 80 mile long lake looks like without another boat on it!

Having a tasty lunch time beverage at the lunch.

Tyler Mae and her "Go Fast Hair"

Beautiful sunset after our fish dinner.

Good morning from Wilson Lake Kansas.

Tyler learning about binoculars.

Austin swimming at lunch.

Girls playing dress up...great looking outfits. :-)

Poor Ty had an abscessed bug bite that got really infected and then burst through the side of face. :-(

We found this awesome salamander in our basement, caught it and have been petting (aka torturing it) for days.

Camping in Wyoming

This was the first time we have ever tent camped with the girls.  While it had it's challenges, it was also extremely fun.  On the last day we caught two toads which lead to the seven kids that were being completely entertained while we packed up boats and camp sites.  We ended up having 18 people, 3 boats, 3 dogs and 7 tents...it was amazing.  Like a little homestead of canvas.

Here's our tent site when the first 8 got there.  Aren't the big cottonwood trees just awesome.

And here's Little Goose and I floating along on the tube behind Grandma and Papa's boat.